I started the blog Bureaucracy for Breakfast in 2010, and it was a comedic look at unemployment, the economic divide, and the lifestyles of the 1%. It was featured on Marketplace on NPR, AOL News, Huffington Post, and Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy. I have been interviewed by ABC 20/20 for a segment about the Rich Kids of Instagram, and in addition to writing about Hollywood, celebrity, and excess for Forbes I write about pop culture and entertainment for The Hairpin, Bustle, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Billfold. My first book, BROKENOMICS, is coming from Seal Press April 2015. You can find me on Twitter @TheElf26.

Celebrities and excess go hand in hand. Brad and Angelina jet all around the world with six kids and an entourage, Beyoncé buys Jay-Z a private jet for Father’s Day, Elizabeth Taylor ran around the world drenched in diamonds and furs. There’s always the occasional star that lives in a little country house, wears dirty overalls, and drives a tractor, but it’s pretty rare.

Kelly Osbourne (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

At the Emmys on Sunday, lavender-coiffed Kelly Osbourne (daughter of Ozzy, red carpet commentator, and Fashion Police co-host) sported a Black Diamond manicure worth $250,000. I watched the red carpet and didn’t notice anything spectacularly amazing about Osbourne’s hands. There weren’t beams of light emanating from her fingernails or anything. Supposedly that polish is really something special – and some people weren’t happy about it. The diamonds came from Los Angeles-based jeweler Azature, and only one bottle of the polish has been made (there are 267 carats inside) but don’t worry. A bunch of $25 knockoff bottles are available for the little people.

Osbourne Tweeted about her extravagant manicure, eloquently saying, “Absolutely sh***ing myself to have that much money on my nails.” Of course she didn’t pay a dime for the six-figure polish. Like most stars, she gets clothes, jewels, coffee, purses, and beauty products for free all the time. Companies want celebs to traipse around town holding their pressed juice brand or using their diamond dog leashes – it’s free advertising. Azature is probably delighted by all the publicity this is getting, whether it’s negative or not.

Osbourne later apologized to the outraged masses, hashtagging #MyApologies and saying she was sorry it offended people. It’s easy to get angry at celebrities about their opulent lifestyles and beautiful possessions, but if an Azature rep walked up to me and said, “Hey do you want a $250,000 Black Diamond manicure for free” my answer would be a gleeful, “Lead the way!” Wouldn’t yours? Sounds fun. Unfortunately that would never happen, unless we were being accosted by a reality TV crew that was filming a show about how “normal people” react to being treated like royalty. It’s fun to imagine it though.

It’s odd to me that people would get outraged by Osbourne’s fingernails, when every star at every awards show is wearing free couture gowns, free Louboutins, and Fred Leighton chokers, gratis. We can say “it’s not fair” that people who have all the money in the world are lavished with beautiful things just because they’re fabulous, but what are we going to do, have Congress create a law to stop companies from giving celebrities freebies?

Osbourne is by no means Elizabeth Taylor (though she might be a tiny percent more Taylor than Lindsey Lohan – very tiny) but she did Tweet, “And please forgive me for not regretting it. It made me feel like a queen!” I bet it did. Taylor never apologized for her diamonds the size of a newborn baby or her fabulous wardrobe; she reveled in it. I’m not sure why this diamond manicure doesn’t irk me. It’s almost comical. When we see celebrities on the pages of tabloids rushing around town holding this kind of phone or that kind of wallet – we’re usually being advertised to. When we see them Tweet about a certain conditioner they just can’t live without – some company wants us to go buy it. We don’t need to be offended by all of this – we just need to be aware of it.

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